The Party of Youth and Diversity Keeps Getting Older and Whiter
After getting so many things wrong in the 2016 election, it’s nice to be getting some right this time around:
Kamala Harris’s announcement of the inevitable on Tuesday left the 2020 Democratic presidential field a little whiter for the wear, especially at the top. There was a great rending of garments in Diversityland, featuring the usual abandonment of critical reason in favor of simplistic, race-based grumbling:
I will admit that seeing a liberal accuse the Democratic base of being racist is a delicious and refreshing change of pace, but it’s as lazy here as it is when they lob this nonsense at Republicans.
Kamala Harris’s biggest problem was always Kamala Harris. Last April I wrote about the progressive unease with both Harris’s time as the district attorney in San Francisco and California’s attorney general. The misgivings were so great that the New York Times had written a preemptive hit piece just before Harris announced her candidacy.
The Kamala Harris campaign story about being a plucky progressive prosecutor never did sync up with her actual record, and that was her Achilles heel in debates, not her skin color or sex.
Her off-putting sense of entitlement didn’t help her either.
After landing some solid blows against Joe Biden in the first debate, Harris had the opportunity to cement a spot in among the leaders of the race. They came after — you guessed it — her AG record in the next debate and she had little to counter with other than smug derision. Her dismissive “top tier candidate” line was her “Howard Dean scream” moment. Harris began declining in the polls shortly thereafter.
By the time the third debate had finished, everyone was sick of her.
Because the Democrats have to look at everything through the prism of diversity politics, there will probably no one among them that does a sober, realistic post mortem about Harris’s failure.
Her wilting on the national stage probably had more to do with the fact that she is a product of the California Democratic party system. The party is so dominant in the Golden State that Democrats need little more than the proper financial backing to advance up the elected office food chain. They don’t exactly get battle-tested when running for office.
Kamala Harris is a United States Senator. It’s patently absurd to even suggest that race and/or sex are somehow an obstacle in her political career.
Only one person can be president at a time, and Harris was a really bad presidential candidate.
She’ll never know that though.
DYING
PJM Linktank